Beatty, Terry - MS. TREE #05 Cover

An early Ms. Tree cover from the hand of her co-creator, Terry Beatty. Ms. Tree is the longest-running private eye comic book series created by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty.

Terry's work here is certainly more stiff and less refined than it would become as the years went by, but this cover caused a bit of a stir amongst Ms. Tree fans when it appeared. One of the conceits of the series was that Ms. Tree would not be doing cheesecake to attract readers. This was not to be Modesty Blaise! Readers would be attracted to a strong competent woman in a hard-boiled crime series. This cover with Ms. Tree about to unfasten her brassiere seemed to put the lie to that idea, but in the story itself Ms. Tree is using her body as she frequently did - as a weapon to distract her opponent and overcome him with violence and subterfuge.

Terry worked large in those days - this scan has as much of the image as could be accommodated by my scanner - but there is a framing white border which extends in all directions from the scan.

Obtained in a nice trade with Paul Handler in October 2015.